State prevails over Beaufort County in creek conflict

COLUMBIA — Against the wishes of Beaufort County, a state plan to address fecal coliform bacteria in a local creek has been upheld.

In a Dec. 21 letter, the county said the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control’s responses to earlier questions failed to address concerns about how best to regulate pollutants in Chechessee Creek.

Board vice chairman Mark Lutz said his position was “based on the fact that (DHEC) staff has more than adequately addressed (Beaufort County’s) concerns.”

He praised the state regulators’ work on Chechessee Creek’s fecal coliform plan.

The waterway is located between the Okatie and Chechessee rivers, just north of Bluffton in a shellfish management area east of U.S. 278.

“Staff works very hard, does a really good job,” said Lutz, who represents the 1st congressional district. “But I have to admit, in addition, with this particular case, I’ve been impressed with staff’s work. They really did a fantastic job of addressing, it appears, very well, each of (Beaufort County’s) comments.”

The board’s vote against giving Beaufort County an appeal hearing on the “total maximum daily load” plan for the creek means the county may now take its challenge to the S.C. Administrative Law Court. The fecal coliform plan is a requirement under the federal Clean Water Act.

The state’s plan established blanket concentration reductions but failed to link how much pollutants were entering the creek to each source, according to the county.

As it is, excess volumes of stormwater runoff may not be a culprit in this watershed issue.

That’s because the Chechessee Creek watershed is made up of only 5.1 percent developed land, putting its percentage of impervious surface area, such as pavement, below local officials’ 5 percent goal.

Pet waste near pavement, feces from wildlife, sanitary sewer overflows and failing septic tanks have all been known to send fecal coliform levels up in waterways.

Beaufort County’s disagreement with DHEC over what’s best for a local waterway is at least the second one in recent years.

In 2010, the county objected to DHEC’s plan to address fecal coliform in the salty Okatie River. As with the Chechessee decision, the DHEC board declined to hear the county’s appeal.

The county’s stormwater manager, Daniel Ahern, said the problems involving Chechessee Creek are similar. But he said with the Okatie impairments, the county felt that excess stormwater runoff volume was the problem. As the DHEC plan for Chechessee is written, the county doesn’t have a basis to pinpoint significant sources of bacteria loads, according to Ahern. That means it’s hard to come up with ways to address the creek’s impairment and to restore shellfish harvesting there.

On Monday, Ahern laid out the problem like this:

“Using blanket concentration reductions is like an auditor saying we must solve our budget problem by reducing all our spending accounts by the same percentage but not telling us how much we spend in these accounts.” He said it would make more sense to know how much you spend in each account. That way you could target one or more of the accounts to trim spending in order to cause the least amount of distress.